The concept of computer control from a remote virtual device over the internet is a major concern in many applications, especially in computer networks and in other cases when users cannot directly access and use their computer.
Hardware and software running on personal computers have become increasingly complex. Therefore, normal users cannot handle all of the issues that are happening to their computers. The above-described invention may help users in a way that, instead of having an on-site expert, allows users to have a remote information technology expert dealing with their devices as they are sitting before their equipment. In this regard, it may be important that the IT specialist can communicate with users in a natural way (e.g., with voice communication, online video chat, text messaging (chat), etc.).
Today, the communication between computers or servers to peripheral devices has become increasingly standardized. For example, most devices (like the keyboard and the mouse, as well as other peripherals) have switched to using the Universal Serial Bus (USB) technology. The USB technology standard defines a mode of hardware and software communication for connecting peripheral devices of a computer to the computer (and among computers). Accordingly, this technology creates a standard connection for a mouse, keyboard, and storage devices for each computer, whether the computer runs Windows PC, MAC PC, Linux PC or Windows Mobile (i.e., phones using the Windows operating system, etc.).
At present, there are many solutions as well as patents referring to methods for remotely accessing a computer over a network. Some of these solutions can be summarized in the two following approaches:
First, access to software: This is the most common approach for remote access to computers over the network. This application can be integrated in an operating system, such as a Remote Terminal Service in Microsoft Windows, or run as a standalone application, such as RealVNC or TeamViewer software. Some of these solutions such as TeamViewer can even allow users to have remote access to computers behind a firewall. However, the disadvantages of these methods require the software running on the computer to be managed. If this computer does not have any software, the user may not be able to do anything on that computer.
Second, access to hardware: This approach is intended to address the limitations of the software approach in the case of a problem in a system or without any pre-installed software. Typically, the U.S. Pat. No. 6,636,929 provides a method for simulating composite USB devices intended to simulate any peripherals on the remote computer that is considered as a local peripheral device on the managed device. This method allows the user to re-boot a computer with the software on the remote computer. This solves the problems in the software approach, but there are a few drawbacks, specifically: By simulating the peripheral storage devices, such as CD-ROM with CD-ROM, on a remote console, the response time can be very slow, especially when the network connection is slow. This makes the implementation become unfeasible.
This design requires a special video control hardware video to collect data and video from the inside bus and implement a web server software for this system to be remotely accessed. This causes inconvenience to normal users when installing that system, as well as bearing higher costs incurred to installing the hardware.
So far, all existing solutions are not designed for natural interaction between local users and remote users with the voice or video communication.